Mum isn’t the only word at Tate’s magnificent Whistler show
Mark Hudson | MSN | 20th May 2026
Whistler is rarely seen as a star of 19th century art. Living in Europe during the Japonisme craze, he absorbed it unfussy aesthetic, producing landscapes with features that are suggested rather than fully detailed. The famous portrait of his mother is likewise a study in restraint and proof that art could be both “abstract and accurate”. But Whistler was an “egomaniac” and his own worst enemy, distracting us from the fact that he made “extraordinary and genuinely revolutionary paintings”.
